Mars Weather Watch
16.08.1999

Mars may be a cold, dry planet but its weather is dynamic. On June 30, wide angle cameras on board the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft watched the development of this large scale storm system above Mars' north polar area.

Eris: The Largest Known Dwarf Planet
18.09.2006

Is Pluto the largest dwarf planet? No! Currently, the largest known dwarf planet is (136199) Eris, renamed last week from 2003 UB313. Eris is just slightly larger than Pluto, but orbits as far as twice Pluto's distance from the Sun.

Shadows at the Moons South Pole
9.04.2022

Was this image of the Moon's surface taken with a microscope? No -- it's a multi-temporal illumination map made with a wide-angle camera. To create it, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft collected...

Shackleton from ShadowCam
4.05.2023

Shackleton crater lies at the lunar south pole. Peaks along the 21 kilometer diameter are in sunlight, but Shackleton's floor is in dark permanent shadow. Still, this image of the shadowed rim wall...

Ancient Craters on Saturns Rhea
30.05.2006

Saturn's ragged moon Rhea has one of the oldest surfaces known. Estimated as changing little in the past billion years, Rhea shows craters so old they no longer appear round their edges have become compromised by more recent cratering.

Phoenix and the Holy Cow
11.11.2008

The northern Martian summer is waning. As predicted, a decline in daylight hours, deteriorating weather, and dust storms are preventing solar arrays on the Phoenix Mars Lander from providing power. Phoenix's last signal...

An Enceladus Tiger Stripe from Cassini
14.10.2008

What creates the unusual tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus? No one is sure. To help find out, scientists programmed the robotic Cassini spacecraft to dive right past the plume-spewing moon last week.

Ancient Craters of Southern Rhea
13.05.2008

Saturn's ragged moon Rhea has one of the oldest surfaces known. Estimated as changing little in the past billion years, Rhea shows craters so old they no longer appear round their edges have become compromised by more recent cratering.

The Spiral North Pole of Mars
18.12.2017

Why is there a spiral around the North Pole of Mars? Each winter this pole develops a new outer layer about one meter thick composed of carbon dioxide frozen out of the thin Martian atmosphere. This fresh layer is deposited on a water-ice layer that exists year round.

Cyclone on Mars
20.05.1999

Late last month a team of Mars-watching astronomers sighted an immense cyclonic storm system raging near the Red Planet's north pole. Their discovery picture, made with the Hubble Space Telescope on April 27, is seen at left while the projected insets (right) show closeups of the storm and surrounding areas.